


Whistle through gritted teeth

by Menatiera, rebelmeg



Series: Bingo Fills [27]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Family Reunion, Hurt/Comfort, Up to your interpretation, bucky reunited with rebecca, comics and movies mashup, good sibling relationship, hand holding, is it the 70s? 80s? 90s? who knows?, natalia romanov is helpful, rebecca barnes proctor is amazing and you can't convince me otherwise, secret signs, they are loving and supporting each other through shit, vague handwaving of timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22032487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/pseuds/Menatiera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/pseuds/rebelmeg
Summary: The Asset and the Black Widow have escaped the Red Room together.Now, James tries to gather the remnants of his history and humanity.  The next step of his journey, with Natalia at his side: coming face-to-face with the sister he'd forgotten he had, Rebecca Barnes.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Series: Bingo Fills [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1204474
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019





	Whistle through gritted teeth

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collaboration of Rebelmeg and Menatiera, and I loved writing with you, megmeg, I hope we'll do this again soon!
> 
> This is also a Bucky Barnes Bingo fill for both of us:  
> rebelmeg - U2 - Hand Holding  
> Menatiera - C5 - Rebecca Barnes

Natasha squeezed the hand in hers as she stood on the sidewalk looking up at the Brooklyn apartment. 

It hadn’t taken them too long to find it. Rebecca Barnes only lived a block away from the home she and Bucky Barnes had grown up in with their mother and father.

Of course, the man standing next to her, holding her hand hard enough to hurt, wasn’t much of Bucky Barnes anymore. 

“I’m scared.” Yasha whispered in Russian, only just audible over the sounds of the city around them.

“I am too.” She murmured back, giving his clenched hand a squeeze she hoped he could feel, his knuckles were so white. She wanted to give him time, time to process and become more used to this idea they had been working towards. It had only taken them a week or so to find the apartment that Bucky’s little sister lived in, but it had been two years of waiting in the meantime.

Natasha wasn’t sure that another few minutes on the sidewalk would help, so she gave Yasha a gentle tug and took a step forward.

She could feel him shaking as he followed her.

  
  


****

James wasn’t sure what made him wait so long - but then again, he wasn’t sure what made him finally deciding to take this step either. It was… well, not fine, but the way his life had become since they escaped from the Red Room.

Correction: since Natalia made him escape from the Red Room. Since she barged back (back?) into his life like a whirlwind as always, and grabbed him and flew him away, quite literally if they accounted the stolen helicopter.

James didn’t regret it.

But it was… hard.

Natalia insisted that his name was James Buchanan Barnes, nicknamed ‘Bucky’. She handed him a file about him - and it was of him, without question, but with grainy old photographs and test results and… James hadn’t been able to read the whole thing through, his head spun and hurt too much. That was what truly convinced him. Natalia could easily fabricate evidence like this, but the pounding in his brain, the faint echoes of voices in his head, those weren’t fake. At least, James didn’t think so.

Not like his head was any more reliable than the best spy of the world.

According to the file, he had a sister. 

She was old now and fragile, but she was his blood. A focal point to learn to see the world from a different view. To learn to see the world as James, as…  _ Bucky. _ He still couldn’t bear that name, not even in the solitude of his head.

He wasn’t ready, but the world was after them - the KGB was after them, the Red Room was after them, the CIA and all the other alphabet soup agencies were after them, and…

Not like Rebecca Barnes-Proctor could help with that, right?

But she could. Maybe. She could help James.

She could help James to make the voices in his head quiet down. She could help James to feel like a  _ human  _ again.

_ That’s what changed, _ James thought in almost a daze as he squeezed Natalia’s hand back and followed her on the pavement.  _ He decided that he wanted to be human again. _

For years, he was so sure that he should remain the machine - that he was better as the Asset than as anything else - but it wasn’t true. The Asset might have been better at survival, and fighting, than James. But he was more than missions now. He had Natalia. And Natalia needed not only the Asset, but she needed James, too.

As much as she loved and accepted him as the Asset, she preferred him as… something else. Something less. Something more.

Something that she called, with adoration and fondness, Yasha.

Something human.

_ Something Bucky might be. _

The doorbell rang with a mechanical tune. James’s stomach clenched and unclenched, as did his flesh hand. His metal one remained steady in Natalia’s hold. He was a step behind and a bit right - a strategic placement of himself to remain hidden as long as possible, to let Natalia speak first. She was good at contact with civilians. The As-- James still wasn’t.

The woman who opened the door was a flimsy one, full of sharp angles: elbows and knees and hips and jawline. Her features were - familiar. That chin, the same shape James had. Eyes, piercing and yet not unkind; and one shade darker than Yasha’s own. Her hair was up in a loose ponytail, silver-white with just a few loose hints of the past brown. Her skin was also darker than James’ and not only because of the tremendous amount of freckles and birthmarks and moles on it - she probably didn’t shy away from the sun like he did. She didn’t carry any weapons, and her muscles weren’t adequate for fighting.

The assessment was quick, a matter of a glance.

It came just a moment before the feeling of breath being punched from lungs, of heartbeat jumping into erratic registers, of an involuntary gasp escaping the lips parting in shock.

“Can I help you?” Rebecca Barnes, his little sister, this old woman, asked Natalia, and James sucked in the air and yet didn’t feel like there was enough oxygen in the whole world to deal with this.

****

Natasha heard Yasha’s gasp, felt the way his metal hand tightened on hers alarmingly, but she just squeezed back.

She knew who the woman was, of course they both knew, but seeing her was further confirmation. Even twice as old as Yasha, there was a strong family resemblance. 

There was also the way Yasha was shaking beside her, even more than before.

People didn’t like assumptions, however. And even more, they hated the idea that they knew less than someone else.

“My name is Natasha. Are you Rebecca Barnes-Proctor?”

The woman looked at her, her stance still welcoming though something in her eyes sharpened. “Yes. Do I know you?”

“No. But I know someone who knows you.”

Rebecca had been reluctant to let them in, it had been easy to read all over her face and in her body language. But she had anyway, showing them into a tidy living room with older furniture, new curtains, and lots and lots of photographs. The woman had taken barely a glance at Yasha, and the combination of the years that had passed, the long hair, and that he hadn’t met her eyes made it so that she hadn’t recognized him. Not yet.

They could hear her in the kitchen, making coffee for the three of them, and after they both assessed the space for exits, weapons, and weaknesses (a habit that wouldn’t break), their eyes turned to the photographs.

Most of them looked recent, at least in the last few years. Children that stood with adults, some of them bearing a resemblance to Rebecca and Yasha. Older pictures, of an obviously younger Rebecca and Marcus Proctor, who she had married.

There were two of particular interest, and Natasha wasn’t surprised that it was these Yasha couldn’t tear his eyes from.

One of the black and white photos was of a family, parents and two children, a son and a daughter. 

Yasha as a child, probably ten years old or so, was grinning at the camera. He was standing in front of his father, holding Rebecca’s hand, and there was a glint of mischief in his eye that was obvious even through the aged photograph.

The other photo was of the young Sergeant James Barnes in uniform with a serious expression on his face. He wasn’t smiling and his eyes weren’t sparkling in this photograph, but there was a resolve and a determination about him that spoke of patriotism and duty and everything else that had led a young man with his life ahead of him straight into a war that he didn’t ever really escape from.

It was Yasha’s face, to be sure. But the similarities all but ended there. The man in the photograph was upright, shoulders straight, chin up, eyes open, and you could almost feel the way he was daring the world to throw something at him.

The man beside Natasha was hunched over, drawn into himself, his long, unkempt hair hanging in his face as if they were curtains he could hide behind. 

Reaching out, Natasha took his hand again, the flesh one this time, as she was sitting on his right side. She laced her fingers with his, holding on firmly, and when Yasha leaned over just slightly, she sat firm against his weight, giving him something to lean against.

She could at least do that much for him.

***

Rebecca came back, and put down a tray of tea on the smoking table. Natalia reached for a cup; James didn’t. He took deep breaths instead, straightened his spine like he was bracing himself to face a handler, and lifted his chin to look their host in the eyes.

His little sister had always been smart as a tack and quick on her feet. Age might’ve changed her figure making her skinnier than before, might’ve made her hair gray and her skin wobbling under the weight of wrinkles, but she remained sharp. Her eyes narrowed, zeroing on James’s face, hand freezing mid-movement. 

James needed all of his self-control to not look away under the intense scrutiny, to meet her gaze head on and reciprocate with his own. He was also searching for - something. He wasn’t entirely sure what exactly, but he knew, he felt, that he’d recognize it once he found it. 

And it was there - he could almost grab it, could almost sense it a shape, but it slipped away like a fish when grabbed, like a thought escaping from the tip of a tongue. “Becca?” James said, voiceless, only his lips forming the name without breath coming out, and Becca’s eyes were wide and shocked and joyful, and James knew that she recognized him, she recognized the man James Barnes was once.

Then Rebecca Barnes-Proctor looked away, and the moment was broken, James could almost hear the shattering pieces hitting the ground.

Rebecca looked at Natalia, and James blinked, because one moment to the next, she looked  _ furious.  _ Natalia might’ve known the reason, because she didn’t seem surprised by the turn of events, but she was a Black Widow, more so, she was  _ the _ Black Widow, so it was impossible to tell the truth with her even for Yasha.

“I don’t know what cruel game you’re into,” Becca stated, “but I won’t participate in it. What did you hope to achieve?”

James knew he shouldn’t, but he felt shrunk back on himself, hunching his back to appear smaller, less of a threat, and ducking his head to hide behind the curtain of his hair again. It was - a new habit. Not even in the Red Room had he made this much effort to disappear. There, he was the Asset, the pride of the Soviet Union and Mother Russia. Here, he was just someone on the run. It didn’t matter that he was the best goddamn sharpshooter in the whole planet, or that he was trained to be the best Soldier known to mankind. He was useless, because he was broken, and he was broken, because he wanted to be more than the Asset.

“It’s not a game,” Natalia answered, “it’s him, Rebecca.”

“Bullshit,” she snorted, “my brother died in the war. This young man, however great the resemblance is, cannot be him.” There was nothing of the openness or kindness left; her tone was just as icy as the winter plains of the Siberian tundra.

James couldn’t stand that. He squeezed Natalia’s hand one more time and let it go, feeling her worried gaze on his face, as he leaned forward in his seat. 

“It’s me,” he said. He wasn’t the Asset. He wasn’t the Soldier. He wasn’t James, either, but he was closer to it than in a long time. “What’s left of me, anyway,” he added, more shyly this time, and met Rebecca’s gaze again. The last words came out more like a plea than a demand, “test me.”

The woman took a deep, shaky breath. James wasn’t sure he could pass her test. His memory was - insufficient, to say at least. But he hoped.

He wasn’t sure when was the last time he hoped this intensely.

He could see that Rebecca was thinking, cataloguing in her head, shuffling through memories, looking for one that would be  _ the one, _ for a memory that would surely reveal an impostor. James could see how hard of a task picking such a memory would be. It should be personal, kept close to the heart and not told to anyone, but not as close so that revealing even its existence would cause pain to the person expressing it.

“My brother and I,” Rebecca slowly said, blinking back tears, “we had a sign. A whistle to say we’re fine and safe.” There was much more to it, but she didn’t say more. She raised her hand, putting two fingers in her mouth, and whistled. It had a very simple melody to it: slow-fast-slow-fast. 

James blinked.

His mind stirred at the sound, but he was sure he didn’t remember. But he didn’t necessarily need to. His body remembered better than his mind, most of the time.

He mirrored her movement, lifting his right hand to his mouth, and put two fingers in to whistle. He exhaled, the used oxygen flowing out of his lungs, through his throat and mouth, and his lips and tongue get into formation without him needing to remember. It was - deeper than memory, deeper than conscious knowledge. His body still knew how to do this. Fast-slow-slow-fast-slow. The sound was high-pitched, or maybe it was just the ringing in his ears.

Becca stared at him, stunned.

“It’s you,” she whispered.

She got up - James could see what was coming, she was old and therefore slow - and yet he didn’t move out of the way. He allowed her to throw herself forward, into a hug, and he waited with arms open and caught her in an embrace, burying his face to her hair.

He didn’t know what was going to happen now - what was the procedure here? Should he say or do something more? - but it didn’t seem like it mattered. Becca hugged him and sobbed until they were both weepy messes on the couch, and when she started to talk between wheezing sobs, James knew that something (or someone) had found a home in his chest and wouldn’t leave again. He was one step closer to Bucky - one step closer than ever - and it wasn’t the end of the road, but it was alright. Single steps went a long road, after all.

He looked over at Natasha, and mouthed a mute _thank you_ to her as well.

They were on their way. Together.

***

Natasha didn’t say a word as she watched the two siblings, separated by decades of cruelty, cling to each other. She saw the way Yasha’s shoulders were shaking, the wet sounds he made when he breathed, and she could see in the way he moved his hands that he was concentrating very hard on not holding onto his sister too tightly.

Rebecca Barnes was outright sobbing, muttering half-sentences between gasps of air, nothing that Natasha could or needed to follow. Those words were for Yasha and Yasha alone.

She was tempted to leave for a moment, go into the kitchen or out into the hall to give them some privacy. But she had promised Yasha she wouldn’t leave him. So she didn’t. She did get up and move to the other couch, however, so the two of them would have room. Becca was all but curled up in Yasha’s lap, and they didn’t look like they’d be moving anytime soon.

He looked at Natasha, though, over his sister’s shoulder. His beautiful blue-gray eyes were wet with tears, and there was so much emotion in them. She could just see the hint of a shaky smile, and she smiled back, her chest far too tight. He always made her feel like that, like her body couldn’t quite contain what she held inside.

Remembering she had a teacup in her hand, Natasha took a sip, appreciating the warmth and flavor, retreating to a place in her head where she could wait awhile. She could hear Yasha and Rebecca talking now, their voices rough with tears and various emotions, but she let the words slide past her without holding onto them. She had held Yasha’s hand through the hard part, and that was what mattered.

They could face the rest of what came to them together.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic, please leave a comment, we thrive with them! <3


End file.
